


these hands (together)

by thinksideways



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Alexander's POV, Angst, F/M, Hamburr, Heavy Angst, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Touching, hand...focused writing? i don't know how to tag that but anyway, slight mention of abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-07
Updated: 2016-10-07
Packaged: 2018-08-19 23:46:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8228872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thinksideways/pseuds/thinksideways
Summary: Stories of their hands, and what they mean - or meant - to Alexander Hamilton.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I was driving listening to music and Your Hands (Together) by the New Pornographers came on and this...thing/fic/exercise in weird writing basically exploded fully formed in my head. Do the lyrics match up with this fic? Not at all. I don't know what happened but I'll take inspiration anywhere I can get it.
> 
> Also I keep swearing I'll write something not just fucking depressing and terrible but today is not that day!!

His mother’s hands are strange and beautiful, the fingertips often stained a faint orange from the spices she’s ground to a fine powder. Alexander will sometimes catch a whiff of turmeric or saffron when she strokes his cheek. When his hair grows too long and sticks to his neck he asks her to cut it, but instead she gathers it back into a ponytail, ties it with a bit of rope, tells him how handsome he looks. He believes it, because she is never wrong.

When the sickness comes, they lie together, fever-stricken, and he doesn’t notice how her hands shake as she wraps him in her arms.

 _We’ll get better soon,_ she tells him. She was half-right.  

He keeps his hair long, after. Every time he pulls it back he remembers her sure fingers gliding through his hair, and the smell of spices.

 

***

 

Burr’s hands are strong and dark and when they shake hands for the first time his fingertip grazes Alexander’s wrist and he isn’t sure if it’s intentional or not. It’s a feeling he will often have with Burr. They drink together and Alexander drinks too much, talks too much, is _too much_ \- but Burr guides him home, and Alexander learns how those hands feel on his shoulders as Burr wraps an arm around him to keep him steady.

Burr's hands feel as strong as they look, and there’s a weight to them. Alexander likes the pressure of it. He leans into him. He’s still quite drunk, but acts drunker still when they get to his doorstep, hands grasping at Burr’s shirt, his intentions more than clear.

“Come in,” he murmurs. Burr refuses. Alexander goes to bed alone.

 

***

 

The next night, though, Burr doesn’t refuse, and Alexander finds out how those strong hands feel dragging across his shoulders, his collarbone. Burr touches him almost delicately, in the beginning, close to reverent until Alexander grabs his hands and presses them to his skin, holds him there.

“I won’t break,” he tells him. A promise.

Once permitted, Burr’s hands grip his hair - and later, his hips - and his fingers sink into so deep into him that Alexander can feel them there even when Burr’s hands are removed, a ghost in his skin. He leaves bruises that Alexander touches the next day, as if reminding himself what happened.

It’s good. He doesn't know what it means, but it’s good.

 

***

 

Angelica’s fingers are long and tapered and he finds them memorizing the first time he takes her hand and kisses it. He wants to linger there, to kiss every knuckle, to keep her hand in his, but propriety dictates his lips touch her hand for only a moment.

 

***

 

Eliza’s hands have a surprising surety, on their wedding night, and they do not tremble when she undoes the buttons on his shirt. Her fingers splay on his chest and the look in her eyes is so hot and dark and he feels himself grow hard under her gaze. Her hands are sure as she undoes his belt, guides him into her. Her nails scratch down his back, tangle in his hair, and she breathes his name, over and over again. When they lay together after, her hand sits loosely in his, and he thinks this could be enough, if he let it be. If only he'd stop staring at the sun.

 

***

 

One night he and Angelica and Eliza are at their home, drinking, and it’s late, it’s too late. Eliza bids them goodnight and goes upstairs to bed. Angelica’s not quite ready to head home, and the summer air feels hot and hazy. They are talking - he can’t for the life of him remember what about - and then they are not, and her hand his on his cheek. Her palm is cool on his skin. The touch is a question, a question neither of them can - _should_ \- respond to, because the answer is impossible.

He says her name - _Angelica_ \- and the word breaks whatever spell existed, because her hand drops to her side and she hurries to leave. They did nothing wrong, nothing impious, but the way his stomach feels – fluttery and sick all at once – feels wrong. Feels right.

Only a moment.

 

***

 

Burr’s hands are a memory, one that replays when Alexander is alone, when he jerks himself off. His own palm is rough, callused, and he likes it. He remembers Burr’s hands, gripping him, wrenching him, remembers Burr’s fingers sliding inside of him, opening him. Remembers Burr’s hand in a fistful of hair, drawing his head around to kiss him, rough - they had always been rough (save for Burr’s first few hesitant touches before Alexander gave him permission, broke the dam), because it made sense somehow. Like if they were rough, if there was nothing tender about their fucking, it could be brushed aside as something animalistic, something raw. Nothing like love. Nothing like that.

Just sex. Just bruising and biting and pulled hair and rough kisses. Just hands grabbing his hips.

_Just._

 

***

 

Washington’s hands are large, and when one heavy hand settles on his shoulder as Washington says _go home, Alexander_ his stomach drops to his feet because he’s not _done_ , the war still rages, there’s still a million things to do and Washington _needs_ him. He pushes the hand off, insists that he’s willing to die - _more_ than willing - but Washington only shakes his head.

 

***

 

Philip’s hands are tiny, yet when they curl around Alexander’s finger he’s surprised at the strength there. Alexander spends hours, _days_ , staring in wonder at him, this perfect mix of himself and Eliza. At those tiny, perfect hands that curl around his finger.

 

***

 

Burr has a small scar on his right hand. He doesn’t know why he remembers this, or why he’ll think about it sometimes, apropos of nothing. Once, Alexander had tried to trace it with a fingertip, had asked _what happened?_ ,but Burr had pulled his hand away before Alexander could finish tracing the length of it and said _it doesn’t matter_.

 

***

 

Burr has a small scar on his right hand. Alexander asks again as he sits across the desk from him. He doesn’t know why he asks. They’re lawyers, now. They’re in a new world, now. A world where they are married. Where Burr’s hands are a memory. He doesn’t trace the scar, this time. Doesn’t touch him at all.

 _It was an accident_ , says Burr. He’s lying.

 

***

 

Burr tells him, later. When they've fucked each other stupid, when Alexander's neck is covered in unexplainable bruises, when it aches to sit down. Burr’s hand is in his. Their hands fit. They've always fit.

“It was my grandfather,” Burr says, “he thought something had gotten into me. Tried to carve a cross in my hand. To protect me.”

The words are bitter, the taste of the memory still sour in Burr’s mouth. Alexander traces the scar again, this time with his thumb. He doesn't need to look; he just knows where it is. He realizes he's memorized Burr’s hands at some point along the way.

It doesn't matter.

 

***

 

Philip’s hands never stop moving. They dance across the piano keys, skilled, matching Eliza note for note. Alexander listens to them as he writes, often without even realizing it; it’s only when the music stops that he ever realizes there was music at all.

 

***

 

Burr’s hands stay at his sides even as Alexander kisses him, desperate. He's tense beneath Alexander’s hands, hesitant. Something shifted, changed.

They still fuck, because Alexander knows what to do, what to say, how to beg and whine until Burr gives in, takes him, leaves him sore and aching. Burr kisses him goodbye and something severs.

Alexander’s hands are shaking.

 

***

 

His own hands grow cramped, almost never without a quill. He works, incessant, as if his words are a dam to some unknowable storm that is looming.

 

***

 

Maria’s hands are unsteady, but they grow increasingly confident as they trace across his body. As he touches her, soft, he marvels at the slight roundness in her belly, slides down to the thatch of pubic hair. He should stop. His fingers slip inside her, and he kisses her inner thighs. He should stop. Maria’s fingers flutter at his temples but when his mouth is on her, when his tongue works assuredly upon her, she lets out a broken cry and her hands tighten, curl into his hair.

He doesn't stop.

 

***

 

Angelica's hand stings on his face as she slaps him, slaps the same cheek she’d once cupped. He does not fight back. He deserves it. He knows he does. He had gone back to Maria, over and over again, using her to fill some insatiable need that he could not quite define. Some inexhaustible feeling of _not enough_.

“Eliza should've been the one to do that to you,” Angelica spits out, and her voice was all fire and fury, the tenderness that had once flavored it long gone.

For once, Alexander does not say anything. She was right. He half-wishes she would slap him again, like there was some amount of pain he could endure that would make this right. As if pain was a type of currency that he could trade for forgiveness.

 

***

 

Eliza doesn't slap him. She doesn't touch him at all, and that’s worse.

 

***

 

Philip’s there on the table at the doctor’s office and his hands are jerking, twitching in a way that’s all too horrible to look at. Alex tries to take Eliza's hand, to offer comfort, as if he has any to give. She yanks her hand away as if his touch had burned her. He doesn't try to take her hand again.

 

***

 

Philip’s hands are still.

 

***

 

Eliza takes his hand for the first time in months. It’s like a benediction, and he wants to fall to his knees in gratitude for her quiet forgiveness. He holds her hand in both of his. There are tears in his eyes, stinging.

It's quiet. It's _enough._

 

***

 

On the campaign trail, Burr smiles and shakes hands. Their hands clasp and they both pretend Alexander doesn't know what those hands feel like, gripping his hips or hair, what the fingers feel like inside him. Before he realizes he’s doing it, he traces the scar on Burr’s hand with his thumb and an odd expression plays across Burr’s face for just a moment, something pained and wretched. There's a feeling in his stomach, a fluttering, like birds, it feels odd and uneasy. He still has Burr’s hands memorized.

It doesn't matter.

 

***

 

He keeps writing. It feels like the only thing he’s ever done right. Sometimes his hand cramps so badly that it no longer feels like it’s attached to him, like it’s some ghostly, disembodied thing with a mind of its own. It doesn’t stop him.

Burr is a dangerous, ruthless politician. He believes this. Burr is not a man who should be in power. He believes this.

So, he does what he has done with so many of his beliefs: he writes them down for the world to see.

And later, privately, to Burr, he writes: _you’re on_.

 

***

 

In Alexander's hand, the gun is shaking.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you all for reading. feel free to yell at me on tumblr [@thinksideways](http://thinksideways.tumblr.com/)


End file.
